Asus Eee PC T101MT to ship in April for $499

The Asus Eee PC T101MT is a netbook with a 10 inch touchscreen display that you can fold down over the keyboard for use in tablet mode. The display is a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel capacitive resistive touchscreen display with support for multitouch gestures. And the netbook runs Windows 7 Home Premium, which includes optimizations for touch input (as well as the Asus TouchGate software suite, which provides a few touch-friendly applications to get you started).

After demonstrating the latest version of the 10 inch convertible tablet at CES in January, Asus is finally getting ready to ship the T101MT in April.

Eee PC.it notes that it will be available in Italy next month for 499 Euros. And I’ve been told that it will be available in the US in early April for around $499 US — which puts the Eee PC T101MT in a pretty good position to compete with the Apple iPad, which also has a $499 price tag, but no physical keyboard or ability to run desktop apps.

The Italian version of the Eee PC T101MT has a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, GMA 3150 graphics, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 0.3MP webcam.Asus says the battery should be good for about 6 hours, and the netbook has VGA, mic, and headphone jacks as well as 3 USB ports and an SDHC card reader.

But it looks like there will also be a version with Windows 7 Starter Edition, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. My guess is that’s the model you’ll get for $499 in the US.

EA Tablet PC features integrated Wi and ultra-fast next time the page loads and additional support micro SD memory card for expandable flash memory. It also easily synchronized with a laptop or PC via USB cable connection, except for Micro SD memory card to ensure that all content, calendars and notes kept up to date.